This is for every teacher who refuses to be blamed for the failure of our society to erase poverty and inequality, and refuses to accept assessments, tests and evaluations imposed by those who have contempt for real teaching and learning.

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Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Public Education for all, versus “my babies”: Shocking Ethics and Inequity in Pennsylvania

by Daun Kauffman, Pennsylvania BAT

originally published on his blog: https://lucidwitness.com/2016/03/26/public-education-versus-my-babies/

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By Mack Sennett Studios-Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
.New episodes of Keystone Cops just keep coming from the
“School Reform Commission” (SRC), Pennsylvania’s legislative concoction
to take over the School District of Philadelphia(SDP).
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The episodes all have the same story line and the same ending, but
the characters take turns embarrassing us. Public Education actually
suffers, charter schools expand. “Local control” is gone. State
government integrity is rated 45th in the nation. Misfeasance is rampant.

Sylvia Simms is the new lead character,
the ‘starlet, Keystone Cop’ with self-focused loose lips. In a recent
episode, during after-dark hours, when many school kids were already in
bed sleeping, and in a direct slapstick move on the quiet ‘leading man’,
CEO William Hite, Simms railroaded a motion to eliminate another Public School
for yet another charter: Mastery Charter. Her own, recently released
email contains divisive, racial overtones, illuminating possible motive:

Simms’ alarming email asks people to “have [her] back”, while she works “especially for [her] babies, the people [she] represents and look like [her].”Full email text here(page 87).

Bill Green: former ‘head cop’ demoted by
the show’s producer, new Governor Tom Wolf. Even in a side role,
Green remains in the midst of the approvals of more and more charters.
In fact he couldn’t wait to ‘second’ Simms’ motion to add the Mastery
charter mentioned above. Note that Green is a graduate of a
private school in Philadelphia.

Lately, Green has been heard claiming that state law “prohibits considering financial impact of additional charters
on the public district when deciding whether to approve [charters]”.
Never mind that funding a charter opportunity for a few select kids
takes funds from all the other kids in Public Schools. Never mind that
the whole purpose for the ‘Reform’ Commission is to alleviate financial
‘distress’ in the Public Schools: financial impacts of his decisions
“can’t be considered” (in Green’s opinion).

You have to watch closely for the next
‘Cop’: Farah Jimenez. Commissioner Jimenez often “recuses” herself
from ‘Reform’ decisions, especially about Mastery Charters, because of
family conflicts of interest. She can ‘duck and dart’ with the best of
slapstickers….

Context: “School Reform” in Philadelphia

Fifteen years ago, the state created the SRC to take away local control from Philadelphia in order to “alleviate financial distress” (PA Acts 46 and 83).
In the interim, politicians’ record includes stunningly consistent
academic starvation with simultaneous fiscal disaster. The previous
Governor cut a billion dollars from state funding of education operating
budgets.

The moral vacancy in all this is that public, neighborhood schools
are not collateral damage in this war, they are the very intentional
bloodbath at ground zero.

Once privatized, the education pathway to the “American Dream” ultimately becomes a service we all need to buy, not something we all have a “right” to, in becoming an educated citizenry of a democracy.

The Constitution of Pennsylvania

We can not privatize our way out of accountability for Public Education for all.

The Pennsylvania Constitution,
Article III. B Section 14, mandates a “thorough” and “efficient”
system of Public education… Maybe the two most important words come
earlier: provide for the “maintenance” and “support” of a thorough and efficient system of Public Education.

We can not “maintain” what doesn’t exist. According to the state
Secretary of Education, the SDP is “distressed.” We can’t be legally
distressed and simultaneously legally “thorough” and “efficient”, so we
violate “maintaining” “thorough” and “efficient”, day-in, day-out.

Next, the state is not “supporting” a thorough and
efficient system of Public Education. Political pressuring to approve
more charters every year is not “support”, but actually a direct attack
on Public Education efficiency in a ‘zero-sum game’.

Even further, the state’s concoction of the “School Reform
Commission” itself is in direct conflict with both: “thorough” and
“efficient”. The SRC is an unelected body, outside local
accountability: inefficient for local citizens, by definition and by
intent. The original context of Act 46, (private management by Edison,
Inc.) and the recent, divided focus of SRC on charter approvals take
away from a “thorough” approach to Public Education. We have certainly
not exhausted a “thorough” set of efforts to “support” Public Education,
efficiently.

We need to get outside ourselves somehow and understand the
cumulative effect of what we are doing to each other in the name of
working “especially for my babies.”

Like Simms, my wife and I have “babies” (and grandbabies). We too
live in north Philadelphia. Some of our family look like Bill Green,
some like Jimenez, some Simms. I am hurt and angry that Simms is working
only for the part of my family that looks like her.

Yes, I can feel the frustration of Simms. I want Simms to feel that frustration for all children: a “universal” vision. All 200,000 children in our city, not diminished to whatever thousand she thinks “look like her”.
Many like to talk about “universal”, “high-quality” Pre-K;
why not “universal”, “high-quality” Pre-K to 12 ? If that vision is
too big for some, maybe it’s time for them to move on.

The list of groups who want change is long, broad and growing: According to Dr. Flynn, President, PA State NAACP, the SRC “has
clearly demonstrated an incapacity to facilitate a thorough and
efficient public education for the children of Philadelphia, and has in
fact, destabilized the entire system.” Rodney Muhammad, of the Philadelphia Chapter called for ending the SRC: “They [want] to take over our children and put them back on the auction block”

There are multiple avenues back to supporting and maintaining Public Education for all. Constitutional remedies beckon, as do Act 46, Sections 691, 696 (a), (b), (d), (d3), (j), (n), and maybe even federal oversight via violations of ‘equal access’ principles.

We can not be swayed by hand wringers like Sylvia Simms and Bill
Green, who would lose power in a true grant of local control for
Philadelphia. We need a vision of true democracy for all,
in the birthplace of democracy, along with taxing authority and with
Constitutional “support” and “maintenance” of Public education from our
great state.

The future of Public education hangs on this battle between “my babies” and “all children.”

Is City Council listening? Mayor Kenney? Anyone in the General Assembly? Governor Wolf? Someone in Washington DC? Anyone?

Call your politicians. Tell them that you support Public Education, with local control, as a key tenet of a healthy democracy.